A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 81

ACTUS QUARTUS, SCAENA PRIMA.

MENDACIO, ANAMNESTES, HEURESIS.

MEN. Prythee, Nam, be persuaded: is't not better to go to a feast, than stay here for a fray?

ANA. A feast? dost think Auditus will make the judges a feast?

MEN. Faith, ay. Why should he carry them to his house else?

ANA. Why, sirrah, to hear a set or two of songs: 'slid, his banquets are nothing but fish, all sol, sol, sol.[275] I'll teach thee wit, boy; never go thee to a musician's house for junkets, unless thy stomach lies in thine ears; for there is nothing but commending this song's delicate air, that ode's dainty air, this sonnet's sweet air, that madrigal's melting air, this dirge's mournful air: this church air, that chamber air: French air, English air, Italian air. Why, lad, they be pure camelions; they feed only upon air.

MEN. Camelions? I'll be sworn some of your fiddlers be rather camels, for by their good wills they will never leave eating.

ANA. True, and good reason, for they do nothing all the day but stretch and grate their small guts. But, O, yonder's the ape Heuresis; let me go, I prythee.

MEN. Nay, good-now, stay a little, let's see his humour.

HEU. I see no reason to the contrary, for we see the quintessence of wine will convert water into wine; why therefore should not the elixir of gold turn lead into pure gold? [_Soliloquises_.]

MEN. Ha, ha, ha, ha! He is turned chemic, sirrah; it seems so by his talk.

HEU. But how shall I devise to blow the fire of beechcoals with a continual and equal blast? ha? I will have my bellows driven with a wheel, which wheel shall be a self-mover.

ANA. Here's old turning[276]; these chemics, seeking to turn lead into gold, turn away all their own silver.

HEU. And my wheel shall be geometrically proportioned into seven or nine concave encircled arms, wherein I will put equal poises: ay, ay; [Greek: heureka, heureka] I have it, I have it, I have it.

MEN. Heuresis!

HEU. But what's best to contain the quicksilver, ha?

ANA. Do you remember your promise, Heuresis?

HEU. It must not be iron; for quicksilver is the tyrant of metals, and will soon fret it.

ANA. Heuresis? Heuresis?

HEU. Nor bra.s.s, nor copper, nor mastlin[277], nor mineral: [Greek: heureka, heureka] I have it, I have it, it must be--

ANA. You have, indeed, sirrah, and thus much more than you looked for.

[_Snap_.

[HEURESIS _and_ ANAMNESTES _about to fight, but_ MENDACIO _parts them_.

MEN. You shall not fight; but if you will always disagree, let us have words and no blows. Heuresis, what reason have you to fall out with him?

HEU. Because he is always abusing me, and takes the upper hand of me everywhere.

ANA. And why not, sirrah? I am thy better in any place.

HEU. Have I been the author of the seven liberal sciences, and consequently of all learning, have I been the patron of all mechanical devices, to be thy inferior? I tell thee, Anamnestes, thou hast not so much as a point, but thou art beholding to me for it.

ANA. Good, good; but what had your invention been, but for my remembrance? I can prove that thou, belly-sprung invention, art the most improfitable member in the world; for ever since thou wert born, thou hast been a b.l.o.o.d.y murderer; and thus I prove it: In the quiet years of Saturn (I remember Jupiter was then but in his swathe-bands), thou rentest the bowels of the earth, and broughtest gold to light, whose beauty, like Helen, set all the world by the ears. Then, upon that, thou foundest out iron, and puttest weapons in their hands, and now in the last populous age thou taughtest a scabshin friar the h.e.l.lish invention of powder and guns.

HEU. Call'st it h.e.l.lish? thou liest! It is the admirablest invention of all others, for whereas others imitate nature, this excels nature herself.

MEM. True; for a cannon will kill as many at one shot as thunder doth commonly at twenty.

ANA. Therefore more murdering art thou than the light-bolt[278].

HEU. But to show the strength of my conceit, I have found out a means to withstand the stroke of the most violent culverin. Mendacio, thou saw'st it, when I demonstrated the invention.

ANA. What, some woolpacks or mud walls, or such like?

HEU. Mendacio, I prythee tell it him, for I love not to be a trumpeter of mine own praises.

MEN. I must needs confess this device to pa.s.s all that ever I heard or saw, and thus it was--first he takes a falcon, and charges it (without all deceits) with dry powder well-camphired[279], then did he put in a single bullet, and a great quant.i.ty of drop-shot both round and lachrymal. This done, he sets me a boy sixty paces off, just point blank over against the mouth of the piece. Now in the very midst of the direct line he fastens a post, upon which he hangs me in a cord a siderite of Herculean stone[280].

ANA. Well, well, I know it well, it was found out in Ida, in the year of the world ---- by one Magnes, whose name it retains, though vulgarly they call it the Adamant.

MEN. When he had hanged this adamant in a cord, he comes back, and gives fire to the touchhole: now the powder consumed to a void vacuum--

HEU. Which is intolerable in nature, for first shall the whole machine of the world, heaven, earth, sea, and air, return to the misshapen house of Chaos, than the least vacuum be found in the universe.

MEN. The bullet and drop-shot flew most impetuously from the fiery throat of the culverin; but, O, strange, no sooner came they near the adamant in the cord, but they were all arrested by the serjeant of nature, and hovered in the air round about it, till they had lost the force of their motion, clasping themselves close to the stone in most lovely manner, and not any one flew to endanger the mark; so much did they remember their duty to nature, that they forgot the errand they were sent of.

ANA. This is a very artificial lie.

MEN. Nam, believe it, for I saw it, and which is more, I have practised this device often. Once when I had a quarrel with one of my lady Veritas' naked knaves, and had 'ppointed him the field, I conveyed into the heart of my buckler an adamant, and when we met, I drew all the foins of his rapier, whithersoever he intended them, or howsoever I guided mine arm, pointed still to the midst of my buckler, so that by this means I hurt the knave mortally, and myself came away untouched, to the wonder of all the beholders.

ANA. Sirrah, you speak metaphorically, because thy wit, Mendacio, always draws men's objections to thy forethought excuses.

HEU. Anamnestes, 'tis true, and I have an addition to this, which is to make the bullet shot from the enemy to return immediately upon the gunner. But let all these pa.s.s, and say the worst thou canst against me.

ANA. I say, guns were found out for the quick despatch of mortality; and when thou sawest men grow wise, and beget so fair a child as Peace of so foul and deformed a mother as War, lest there should be no murder, thou devisedst poison.

MEN. Nay, fie, Nam, urge him not too far.

ANA. And last and worst, thou foundest out cookery, that kills more than weapons, guns, wars, or poisons, and would destroy all, but that thou invented'st physic, that helps to make away some.

HEU. But, sirrah, besides all this, I devised pillories for such forging villains as thyself.

ANA. Call'st me villain?